Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) was an English poet whose war sonnets of 1914, among them The Soldier, expressed the idealism of the first months of the First World War. His death on the way to Gallipoli made him a national symbol of a lost generation.
Works
1914 and Other Poems
Rugby and Cambridge
Rupert Chawner Brooke was born on 3 August 1887 at Rugby, where his father was a housemaster at the famous school. He was a brilliant pupil and, at King's College, Cambridge, became a well-known figure, admired for his looks and charm.
He acted in plays, helped found the Marlowe Society and was close to the Fabians and the Bloomsbury circle. His first collection, Poems, appeared in 1911.
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
Brooke lived at Grantchester, near Cambridge, which he celebrated in a famous poem written in a Berlin café in 1912. After an emotional crisis, he travelled in 1913–1914 to the United States, Canada and the South Seas, staying several months in Tahiti.
He contributed to the anthologies of Georgian Poetry edited by his friend Edward Marsh.
1914
When war broke out, Brooke was commissioned in the Royal Naval Division and took part in the defence of Antwerp in October 1914. That winter he wrote five sonnets, 1914, published in early 1915.
On the voyage to the Dardanelles he developed sepsis from an infected mosquito bite. He died aboard a French hospital ship on 23 April 1915 and was buried in an olive grove on the Greek island of Skyros.
Anecdotes
Read in St Paul's
On Easter Sunday 1915, The Soldier was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral by the dean, William Inge. Brooke died nineteen days later.
Churchill's tribute
Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, wrote an obituary of Brooke in The Times, praising him as a symbol of the young men going to war.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Rupert Brooke buried?
On the Greek island of Skyros, in an olive grove where his friends dug his grave on the evening of his death.
How did Rupert Brooke die?
Of sepsis from an infected mosquito bite, on a hospital ship on 23 April 1915, on the way to Gallipoli. He was never in battle there.
What are the 1914 sonnets?
Five sonnets written in late 1914: Peace, Safety, The Dead (two sonnets) and The Soldier.